Byron turned off the engine. A tall man came out of the shadows. When he got closer, I could see he was white, somewhere in his forties, maybe, with a neat haircut, wearing a dark boxy-cut suit.
He bent down so his face was close to Byron’s. I couldn’t hear what passed between them. The tall man opened the back door and climbed in next to Gem. I half-turned so I was facing Byron, my good eye on the back seat.
“This is Brick,” Byron said to us.
“My name is Gem,” she said, holding out her hand.
He shook it.
“Burke,” I told him. And he did the same. His grip was soft and dry. Contact, not pressure—no transmissions. I couldn’t make out all his features, but he had a high forehead and a squarish jaw.
He took some photographs out of a manila envelope I hadn’t noticed in his hand. “These two surfaced at oh- six-twenty-two,” he said. “Just before first light. They came in a pickup, a Ford F150 with California tags.” He read the license number to Byron.
“There goes the budget,” Byron said.
“Shouldn’t take as long as you might think,” Brick replied. “Their truck was one of those ‘Lightning’ jobs— couldn’t miss it, even from a distance. They were real limited production. Can’t be that many of them running around.”
He handed the photos to me, together with a pocket flash. “These are from a digital camera, downloaded and printed. The detail is very good, but you’ll need to blow them up anyway.”
“Try this,” Byron said, taking the flash from me and handing over a rectangular magnifying glass. He trained the light where I was looking. Skinheads. In jackets—one leather, the other denim—and T-shirts. The photos showed them standing next to their truck; walking toward the Russians’ house; returning. The last two shots were close- ups. Even under the low-light conditions, the clarity was better than the average mug shot—I’d know either of them again. And they weren’t from the same crew as the plaza. These two were a decade, if not a generation, older.
I handed the photographs to Gem. Brick took the flash from Byron and held it for her while she checked for herself.
“These men were not the ones who—”
“They’re not,” I agreed with her. Then I asked Brick, “Are they known to—?”
“Have to wait on positive IDs for that.”
“Can you do it from these photos?”
“Possibly. It’s all on digital, and we’ve got programs that can work miracles with the pixels. But there’s a better option. I creeped their truck while they were inside the house. Got some really excellent lifts. Too many, in fact. So it will take a while, run all the elims. But if they’re in the computer banks, we should be able to pull them up.”
“That was slick,” I complimented him.
“Brick is James-fucking-Bond,” Byron said proudly. “They’ll never know anyone was there, either.”
“Why would skinheads—?” Gem asked.
“There’s all kinds of skinheads,” I told her. “We won’t know until …”
“… some of the lines tighten,” Byron finished for me.
When the Chrysler pulled out of the garage on Brick’s signal,
I was at the wheel, Gem sitting next to me. Byron stayed with Brick, saying they both had work to do.
“Makes me feel … useless,” I told Gem.
“Because you cannot go with them?”
“Not go with them, go
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked her, turning left onto Burnside, thinking how Portland’s street grid was pretty easy to navigate.
“I have work to do.”
“Oh. You mean you have to go back to—”
“No. Work to do here. As I told you from the beginning. But I have … neglected it, somewhat. And I must devote myself to it for … a while now.”
“No problem.”
“You are not … concerned?”
“I don’t know how you mean the word, little girl. Worried about you, what you’re into? Or nosy about stuff that’s none of my business?”
“The first.”
“You speak, what, a half-dozen damn languages? You know at least that many ways to kill a man. Your IQ’s off the charts. You survived what a couple of million people didn’t … and that was when you were a little kid. It would be … I don’t know … disrespectful to worry about you.”
“But you call me ‘little girl.’ How does that square with what you just said?”
